the thing that makes me insane about euphoria is like...ok, we've known there were problems since season 1, it's never been perfect. and yet. somehow they wrote one of the greatest lesbian love stories we have on a teen show. i love you. i need you. you make me worse in every way but the ones that count. i can't live without you but also i can't get on that train. they wrote male characters who get to the rot of everything that is abject about american masculinity, the cruelty, the violence, the secrets they keep that warp their souls and their childrens' souls. the intersections of white hegemonic masculinity and transmisogyny. the economics and culture of modern sexuality. they established family dynamics that are so varied and rich and shocking and violent and real (rue and her mom, nate and cal, cassie and her parents, maddy falling into an abusive relationship because she wanted more than her parents could ever have.) they wrote about how american culture destroys teenage girls in a million different ways--the drugs, maddy's pageant career, cassie's treatment at the hands of boys around her, the way kat comes to feel only illegal sex work can help her seek empowerment only for it to come back to haunt her. they made what could have been a defining teen show of the twenty-first century.
and from what we can tell from the next two seasons and the rest of sam levinson's career it seems like he did all of this BY ACCIDENT. accidentally stumbled into profound cultural insights that he abandoned in favor of turning the entire show into fetish content. accidentally picked a cast full of magnetic, incredible, future superstars, and his ego couldn't handle their successes, so rather than celebrate them as a mentor, he writes a saw trap of a show that turns their first hit into a public humilation ritual. accidentally came up with the most creative and character enhancing way to continue the show during an unprecedented global pandemic, and when it did well, he was so threatened by the talent of a young trans writer/actor that he mostly wrote her off the show and burned a bridge with her permanently, forever giving her a sour and skewed image of what being on a set should look like. accidentally wrote a storyline that either helped fuel or existed alongside one cast member's descent into maga grifterism, and she winds up becoming the main character. it makes me absolutely sick to think about what we lost, who this man is who created this work, and the fact that i feel like we don't talk enough about how insanely shocking that first season is.
